US is closer than you think

When Australians have a lot of contact with Americans, they quickly realise how much they have in common. But sooner or later there's an unsettling realisation that the two peoples are also seriously different.

One of the wise men of Australia's relations with the US once told me his secret formula for grasping this reality. He called it the 80:20 rule. Americans and Australians are 80 per cent the same and 20 per cent different. But the 20 per cent is very different.

On the last day of his four years as US ambassador to Australia last week, I asked Jeff Bleich what he thought of this: "I'd say 80:20 is about right but that the 20 per cent are not important differences.

"I think the 20 per cent reflect the things that make us more interesting, more appealing, more ingratiating to one another."

For instance? "I think the tall poppy approach in Australia is very different. In the US, I have yet to meet a humble billionaire.

"But I think that is one of the great appeals to Americans of Australians. That there is a great levelling of all people and a great appreciation that no one should think too much of themselves.

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"I have met very gracious, humble people in Australian society with great wealth or great power and they don't wear it that way. I think of a guy like Lindsay Fox who's just a wonderful human being and I think about meeting your former prime ministers whether it's prime minister Hawke or prime minister Howard.

"They wear their celebrity and their accomplishments very lightly. They're just very accessible, very engaging.

"I think Australians enjoy the fact that Americans are a bit irrepressible and they do speak in hyperbolic terms and enjoy chest-beating. But those are differences in style. But they don't reflect a difference in core values and that's why year in, year out, we grow closer and closer."

The wise man who introduced me to the 80:20 rule had other differences in mind. The divergent conceptions of the role of the state, for example.

As a pair of Brits, John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, wrote in their book about the US, The Right Nation: "The centre of gravity of American opinion is much further to the right" than in any other rich country, "and the whole world needs to understand what that means."

Bleich was a Californian "superlawyer" in the American mould, and a friend and fund-raiser of Barack Obama's before the President nominated him to his Canberra post. He won some news coverage last week for his tearfully heartfelt valedictory speech to the National Press Club where he described his four years as part of the alliance as "the greatest honour and privilege in my life".

Yet in spite of the closeness of Australia and the superpower, Bleich worries about a couple of Aussie misconceptions. One is about the US: "One thing that I worry about - it's that Australians who travel to the US or spend a lot of time with Americans have a very positive image of Americans.

"But people who don't - their image of America can be what they see on Keeping up with the Kardashians or Toddlers and Tiaras or Bridezillas, and it's not necessarily our best. They seem weird to us too.

"I think the important thing about Americans is that we really want to do good in the world. That is our abiding ethic. We want to be helpful. And if we sometimes get things wrong, it's because of the execution, not the intention.

"And you don't always see that in people who are featured in popular media."

The other is what he describes as an Australian misconception of itself: "I was surprised by the fact that Australians tended not to appreciate just how important they were to the US and on the international stage."

One illustration of this was Obama's choice of Australia for his landmark 2011 speech declaring the US "pivot" away from the Middle East and to Asia: "The United States is a Pacific power, and we are here to stay," the President said.

He used the speech to predict the collapse of China's Communist Party. On the same visit, he announced the permanent new rotating deployment of the Marines to the Northern Territory. It was the most consequential moment in the life of the alliance under Obama.

A year later, his national security adviser, Tom Donilon, described it as "really a fundamental statement about the United States' view towards Asia, its vision of Asia".

Paul Keating expressed alarm that Obama delivered it in Australia's Parliament because, he said, it was a "diamond-hard speech" that risked Australia "getting caught up in the rhetoric of what can be conceived as a nascent containment policy" of China.

Bleich says Obama chose Australia for the speech because the two countries had a model relationship. "That was part of the message of featuring Australia as a kind of a model for how this region can develop truly as a zone of peace, stability, prosperity and co-operation."

Washington gives the clear impression it would prefer the other nations of the Asia-Pacific to be less like China and more like Australia. Preferably about 80 per cent the same.